


partial credit

by Helenish



Series: Here is a thing that isn't happening. [20]
Category: Inception
Genre: M/M, underage mumble mumble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-11
Updated: 2011-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-16 21:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helenish/pseuds/Helenish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't pretend," Arthur says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	partial credit

"No," Arthur says, flipping through a case folder. "Absolutely not. We’ll have to find another way to get Sullivan up to the hotel room.”

“You haven’t even heard the whole plan,” Mal says. Sullivan likes teenage prostitutes and creating innovative blood pressure medications.

“I don’t need to hear it, it’s unacceptable,” Arthur says, but Mal ignores him and says,

“It’s tidy--Eames gets him up to the hotel room, we knock him out, he wakes up and thinks he’s been mugged, but who can go to the police when he’s been mugged while soliciting sex from an underage--”

“I said no,” Arthur says, and Dom leans back and says,

“I put a lot of time into this--”

“And I don’t care,” Arthur says, slapping the case folder down on Mal and Dom’s kitchen table. “Eames is not doing this.”

"We'll be there the entire time," Dom says. "Nothing is going to happen."

“That’s not--” he looks at Dom, matter-of-fact, and Mal, smiling gently. “But--you already asked him, didn't you,” he says, slowly, realizing.

"He has agreed," Mal says.

"So you went behind my back," Arthur says. "You knew what I would say and you got him alone--"

"He agreed," Mal says.

"Mal, for chrissake, he'd do anything you asked him to do--"

"Ah, but I did not ask him to do this," Mal says, lifting her hand. "I offered it as an option, I let him know he did not have to--"

"You ganged up on a fucking kid who thinks you hung the fucking moon is what you did," Arthur says, shoving back from the table and standing up. "and you shut me out, which you had no right to do--"

"I think you're forgetting that you're not really his legal guardian," Dom says, starting to look annoyed. "He's eighteen, Arthur, and Mal and I consider him a full partner--"

“Yeah, okay,” Arthur says sarcastically.

“He works very hard,” Mal says. “And you know he has been instrumental--or, more accurately, crucial to--”

"Don't make it about his contributions to the job," Arthur says. "He hasn't graduated from high school, he's eating me out of house and home, he just broke up with his first girlfriend, he is a fucking kid and you know it, you know his--past history, and I can't believe you would ask him to use his--his body, his sexuality--"

"He'll use his sexuality whether you shelter him from it or not," Mal says. "Best to do it where he can’t get hurt.”

“He’s already been hurt,” Arthur says. “This will just--asking him to do this--”

“Don’t you think he deserves a chance to learn how much power it gives him, that he can make people forget that he is dangerous until he wants them to know?” Mal says. “Eames is a beautiful boy, but he’s growing into a man. You can’t protect him from that and you can’t undo his past by pretending that it didn’t happen.”

“I don’t pretend,” Arthur says, very low.

“Then show him that being able to make someone want to fuck you means nothing,” Mal says. “Just another tool, like you and your gun.”

“You don’t have to come along on this one,” Dom says, spreading his hands. “We can find--”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur says. He yanks on his jacket. “We’ll do it your way. But if there’s any trouble, I’m pulling the plug.”

“Of course--” Mal begins.

“And if you go behind my back again, we’re fucking through,” Arthur says.

He has to drive around for almost forty-five minutes and then stop and buy some groceries before he’s calmed down enough to go home. Eames is frowning in concentration at something, sitting on the couch with his feet propped against the coffee table, and doesn’t even look up until Arthur says,

“The set-up for this job--you don’t have to.”

“The--” Eames says. He looks up. Arthur stares at him looking for--worry, maybe. fear.

“No one will be angry if you don’t,” Arthur says. Eames shrugs.

“Dom’ll be kind of annoyed, he’s spent two weeks having cybersex with the guy--”

“Dom can go fuck himself,” Arthur says, and then it’s Eames looking at him, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

“This bothers you,” he says. “It’s not--I’m not going to do anything with the guy.”

“I know,” Arthur says, thinking sickly of Eames, lingering in the doorway of the hotel bar, Eames with Sullivan’s hand on his thigh, Eames smiling a little, saying, let’s go upstairs. Thinking of the things that Eames had offered to him, the day they met, the bruises on his thin arms, the red marks coming up on his wrist where Arthur had grabbed him when Eames had tried to lift his wallet.

“Arthur, if there’s--” Eames says quietly.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

“It’s just--I have to get these flashcards done tonight.”

“What flashcards?”

“State capitals,” Eames says, sitting back and pulling his work back into his lap.

“What?” Arthur says. Eames is drawing a log cabin in colored pencil on the card that says Nebraska.

“It’s for partial credit,” he says, shading the logs carefully. “I have to pass an American History exam to graduate and--”

“No you don’t,” Arthur says.

“It’s not on my transcript,” Eames says. “I have to take a make-up test, but I can get an extra ten points if I do a visual aid project.”

“Shit,” Arthur says. There’s a heavy study packet on the coffee table. He picks it up and starts flipping through. “Do you know anything about this stuff at all?”  
Eames shakes his head, starting a lobster on a new card.

“When’s the test?”

“Monday,” Eames says. Eames is running sims with Mal all weekend for the job. Arthur flips through the packet. Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Missouri Compromise--

“Shit,” he says again. “Really? Because Pete swore up and down that those transcripts were complete, and you just had to pass senior classes.”  
Eames shrugs. “I’m getting my money back,” Arthur says, annoyed. “Can you pass?”

“I can get through the multiple choice, and at least some credit on the essay,” Eames says, “but there are something like a hundred short answer, so.”

“Shove over,” Arthur says, and Eames gathers up his pencils and notecards and puts them on the coffee table. “I can talk you through some of it.”

“I thought you said that was bad study habits.”

“It is,” Arthur says. He’s still flipping through the packet--Harriet Tubman, the Gold Standard, Populism--the sims are time-consuming, complicated. Eames needs space to be able to concentrate. “I think you’d better just cheat,” Arthur says. Eames looks sideways, mouth falling open.

“Really?” he says.

“Yeah, fuck it,” Arthur says. “You can learn this stuff anytime; a lot of it’s stupid bullshit anyhow.”

“What makes you think I can cheat and not get caught?” Eames says, casually, flipping over a new card and picking up a black pencil, tapping it against the new notecard, not drawing. Arthur just gives him a sideways incredulous glance and Eames’ mouth flattens.

“I don’t,” he says. Arthur watches him draw a Pilgrim hat.

“Don’t do it if you don’t want to,” he says.

“You said--” Eames begins, and then says. “Right. okay.”

Eames passes the test; he doesn’t tell Arthur how he did it.


End file.
